Tag: Waste

Daily Life, Government, Politics, Solving the wrong problem, woke

What Do They Want?

Yesterday was the national “Hands Off!” protest. Watching the protests unfold across the country, I was inspired. So powerful. Speaking truth to power. I can hardly wait until the “Fight the Oligarchy Tour” comes to my town next week! Sorry, just kidding. The sheer ridiculousness of these “movements” is the perfect demonstration of what’s wrong with the democratic party today. I have absolutely no frigg’n idea what they’re actually protesting or what they want?

I visited the Hands Off! and Bernie’s Oligarchy Tour websites to see if they listed what they’re protesting against. Nothing. Just pithy sayings and links to order protest signs. “Musk is not my president!, Hands off immigrants!, Hands off DC!, Tax the billionaires!”. You’d think the organizers would want to put forth actual talking points and information describing what they want or what the alternative plan is… but you’d be wrong.

If you disagree with Trump’s tariff plan or closing the border or cutting taxes, that’s fine – then explain what your plan is. This is the problem with the left’s message – nobody has any idea what they actually want. To the best I can tell they want to open the border again, the national debt doesn’t matter, they clearly don’t like cutting government waste and fraud, and are happy with the current globalist trade structure. Am I wrong?

Yeah, but Elon is a Nazi and Trump is just protecting his billionaire friends! Hah! Counter that you white nationalist pig!! Protesting something is fine but without articulating an alternative, you’re just stomping your feet like a petulant child. The closest to having a plan is Bernie, whose sole focus in life is to tax the billionaires because somehow that’s going to fix our financial mess.

The irony is that for the first time we have an administration willing to expose just how badly the little guy has been getting screwed by the government. The true oligarchy is the defense industrial complex, politicians, and DC deep state entities that have bent you over and forced you to take it up the ass for years. The government has pissed away every tax dollar taken from me in my entire working life in about 30 seconds. Since I have to write the annual check to the government this week… I’m fucking angry about my money being forcibly seized and wasted. And the Left’s response is – please stop exposing and cutting the waste? Help me understand how this is your action plan for the working man??

Destroying Teslas and chanting that Trump and Elon are only doing this to enrich themselves is so breathtakingly idiotic, it’s difficult to believe this is the actual strategy. I keep waiting for someone to intelligently articulate how going back to the Biden strategy (whatever that was) is how this country gets back on track. Please defend spending $1.5 million taxpayer dollars to fund a “voter confidence summit” in Liberia. Because if you don’t have either an alternative plan or a justification for the waste… then your idiotic protests will be treated as the clown show they appear to be.

My favorite signs from the protests are the ones with “Nobody elected Elon!”. So… you’re ok with shadowy, unelected bureaucrats pissing away $40+ billion a year at an agency like USAID – but man you’re REALLY pissed that someone is trying to make the government more efficient? Please help me make sense of that. Oh I know, it’s a giant conspiracy to funnel government money to Elon’s evil corporate oligarchy that you loved until last year. Sigh.

These are some strange times. It almost makes me want to return to the simplistic times when the Republicans were the party of the evil rich and the Democrats were the party of the working man. Simple talking points, clear lines in the sand. Everyone getting equally screwed by both parties behind the scenes. Ain’t politics fun?!?!

Government

It’s A Lie

They are lying to us. No, not about Chinese spy balloons/UFO’s. (Klaatu Barada Nikto. If you know, you know) Although they may be lying about that as well, that is not the focus of today’s rant. This will be my annual post about Social Security. During the State of the Union, there was a bit of a dust-up about cuts to social security. Apparently evil republicans want to eviscerate social security, leaving seniors to die on the street. No we don’t! Yes you do! No we don’t! Yes you do! Sigh. Same old tired argument.

Both sides get away with this ridiculous charade because most folks don’t understand how social security works/worked. Here’s the simplistic overview. You pay 12.4% of your annual wages into social security. 6.2% by you, 6.2% by your employer. Social security was intended to be a “pay as you go” system – collect just enough money each year to cover outlays. But those sneaky devils have been collecting more than they need from the very beginning.

Each year the government collects more in social security taxes than they need to cover payouts. That extra money is “loaned” back to the government (at varying interest rates). This is the Trust Fund (made up of both social security and disability insurance). Also known as the “Lock Box of IOU’s” that Al Gore famously referred to. The Trust Fund currently has roughly $2.9 trillion in assets. Somewhere between this year and about 5 years from now, depending on what figures you use, we will no longer be collecting a surplus in social security taxes. When that happens, we’ll have to start cashing in those notes we loaned to the government’s general fund.

All good, right? Well don’t be shocked, but those rascals in congress gobbled up that extra revenue and spent it as fast as they could go. We’ve been spending like drunken sailors on a three-day-leave for year, after year, after year… so now when the Trust Fund needs its money back – surprise, surprise, surprise! We don’t have it. So now, we’ll have borrow a second time to repay what we already borrowed.

It’s worse than a Madoff/SBF Ponzi scheme. Since we’re already spending (borrowing) about $1.3 trillion more than we take in each year, the odds of reducing federal spending enough to cover payments to social security are pretty slim. Fun times!

So let’s recap. Politicians happily collected $2.9 trillion of your dollars they didn’t need so they could spend it on whatever boondoggle they fancied. Then they kept spending billions and trillions more than they took in every year, adding up to current debt of $31.5 trillion.

Folks, to borrow the quote from the movie Full Metal Jacket – “It’s a huge shit sandwich, and we’re all going to have to take a bite”.

The point of all this to highlight what scum these politicians are. I don’t care what side of the argument they try to make. They can say “we’ll always keep our social security commitments (we’ll just borrow more). The other side might say “we’ll need to reduce benefits to keep the fund solvent”. Either way, they’re not being honest. They spent us into oblivion. They blew through the Trust Fund. They knew they were doing it and ignored the problem for years. Now you lowly peasants get to pay more (either in debt/inflation) or get less (in reduced benefits). Probably both.

The odds of my receiving much in the way of social security benefits is slim. This is despite my paying (by force) into the system my entire adult life. So, excuse me if I have nothing but vile things to say about our elected representatives. If any proposal these folks make don’t also include in the same sentence, massive cuts to discretionary spending…

Well, you can fill in the expletive yourself.

Cool, Daily Life, Solving the wrong problem

Research Paralysis
  • We live in a wonderous time. We have the entirety of human knowledge instantly available with one mouse click. This is a blessing and a curse. The kids of today have no idea what it was like to “comparison shop” back in the old days. Pre-internet if you wanted to do some research your choices were 1) Read magazine articles (yes, printed on actual paper that you had to purchase) 2) Talk to your neighbor Bob who used something similar twenty years ago 3) Go to the store and talk to a salesperson. Of course we also didn’t have 37 different choices for the same product either, so it was a little simpler. Today is different. I’m currently researching a reasonably high dollar purchase and the information is overwhelming. Step one is the casual search to figure out who the possible manufacturers and models are in the space. Step two is going to the manufacture web sites to get a sense of price and features. At this point I’ve narrowed things down to a handful of possibilities. Now comes the fun part. The user reviews. Using a combination of review sites and activity specific forums, I’ll spend countless hours reading user reviews. What you typically find is; 5 reviews saying it’s the best product ever invented; 7 reviews stating the product disintegrated thirty seconds after opening the box; 2 reviews of a completely different product; 3 reviews of the first version of the product from seven years ago; and 18 posts asking to click this link for free pre-paid phone cards. The next step is the dark hole of YouTube videos about the product. Those also fall into several distinct categories; Slick, professionally produced, manufacturer videos; Generic reseller companies that talk about the products but never offer opinions for fear of offending suppliers; Internet influencers paid to promote a product; And Joe-Bob from Nebraska who recorded a “review” video with his cell phone in the garage, with audio so bad you can’t hear anything but dogs barking and lawnmowers in the background. My final research step is to stumble upon a product I hadn’t heard of yet that looks absolutely perfect and has great reviews. I get all excited and then realize that it’s a European product not available in the US. Sigh… back to step one. It can literally take me weeks (months on occasion) of paralysis to make a decision for fear of choosing the wrong thing. While I appreciate all the new choices we have today, in hindsight I might have been better off in the old days with a salesperson just telling me what I need.
  • Speaking of purchase decisions, for those of you keeping track at home, I did get a new phone. I made a last second audible (audible. phones. see what I did there? gosh I’m clever) and went with the Samsung S21. I ended up liking the camera better and it was in stock. I’m all about instant gratification. So far so good. And the best part… it looks like my navigation issues with the phone and ginormous motorcycle may be mostly solved. My first test ride and it worked great. Mostly. Now the headset on the helmet is having trouble with a Bluetooth connection to the phone. How come things just aren’t easy?
  • I got an email today from United Airlines updating me on their role in the “global fight against climate change”. I guess they’ve made some commitment to becoming 100% green and reducing carbon emissions by 100% by 2050. I’m not sure that’s even possible unless they’re using battery operated planes using electricity only from wind farms… but whatever. This email was announcing their groundbreaking “Eco-Skies Alliance” and the commitment to SAF – Sustainable Aviation Fuel. What is SAF you might ask? Evil oil companies use things like used cooking oil in a chemical process to make it similar to standard jet fuel. They blend it with regular Jet-A and supposedly achieve lower carbon emissions. Sounds great, right? The problem is that it’s massively more expensive than regular Jet-A. So they’ve formed this group soliciting corporations to voluntarily contribute money to a fund to help airlines purchase the stuff. Oh, and to lobby congress to provide massive funding and subsidies to lower the price. So, as you end up paying the additional “SAF tax” on your airline ticket do you honestly think you’re preventing global climate disaster? I guess it doesn’t matter. At least United is woke and cares about the environment and the poor polar bears who are running out of ice and tasty seals to snack on.
  • Oh, by the way all that sorting of your recyclables you’ve been doing… China’s not buying our garbage any more, so in most cities all that stuff just ends up in the same landfill. So does that mean I still have to wash out my mayonnaise jars before throwing them away or not?
  • I’m not entirely sure why, but some scientists had a debate about who would win in a fight between King Kong and Godzilla. It astounds me that paleontologists actually had enough time to seriously think about this. I’m even more amazed that I read the entire article.

Song of the day: The Clash – Train in Vain (Live at the Lewisham Odeon)

Government, Politics, Solving the wrong problem

I Just Don’t Care


You see Bob, it’s not that I’m lazy, it’s that I just don’t care.

Peter Gibbons

I don’t care what your cause is. Saving the whales. Education. Transportation. Border walls. Healthcare. Wars. Infrastructure. Climate change. Everyone has their hot button interests. I’m sure they’re all worthy in some way. There’s just one problem. WE CAN’T PAY FOR ALL OF THEM.

As someone once said, eventually you run out of other peoples money. Whatever topic is your burning issue, the one that gets you to fire up the Facebook meme machine… great, more power to you. Advocate the hell out of it. But what I do want you to do as a responsible citizen, is tell me what you’re going to cut to pay for it.

You don’t get to just add spending any more. You want to fund research for the mating habits of the snowy plover? Great! Tell me what existing program is less important that you’ll cut funding for.

Could you imagine? We freeze local, state, and federal funding at it’s current point. Every single program, existing and proposed, has to compete for a fixed number of dollars.

Sorry, I’m under the weather and may have had too much cough medicine. I nodded off and had a weird vision of government. Carry on.